This invention is an improvement on the process disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,323,531 one of the co-inventors thereof being a co-inventor of the present application. U.S. Pat. No. 4,323,531 concerns itself with the forming of thermoplastic articles from a polymeric resinous powder which is compressed into a briquette, sintered and then forged and, if desired, formed into an article so that the process is essentially scrap-free, and the need to go through a melt-forming stage is avoided. While the aforesaid process can readily form satisfactory products from most thermoplastic resinous powders, some difficulty in doing so at acceptable production speeds with some resinous powders and for large parts can be experienced. The present invention improves the process so that forging of briquettes into preforms which have essentially no voids, cracks or defects and have the prerequisite toughness can be accomplished with satisfactory rapidity even with large parts. By this invention, an improved essentially scrapless process is provided which can simplify the steps of the operation of forming. Thermoplastic resinous powders can be formed by this process at production speeds directly into products of high quality even where the resinous powders are basically difficult to form.